Tim Geiges

Soils provide vital functions and ecosystem services that we all depend on, but landuse changes and global climate change threaten many of those functions and services. Road projects have a vital responsibility in safeguarding and supporting European soils through informed and responsible land-take, reduced soil sealing, reduced soil compaction during construction, and control of potentially contaminated soils. This calls for methods to assess the impact of road projects and for mitigating measures for offsetting, compensating, and minimising the environmental impacts on soil resources. [...]

Soil is defined as a biologically active mixture of organic matter, minerals, liquids, and gases built up from horizons consisting of different proportions of these components. It is the result of a long weathering process driven by biological, climatic, geological and topographic influences. A natural soil has four main functions: the habitat function, the production function, the regulation function and the archive function. Road construction entails soil sealing, compaction, pollution, and disposal of surplus material which compromise the soil functions with direct and indirect negative impact on people and their environment. Damage on soil must be avoided, mitigated, or compensated for. Therefore, soil has to be considered already in the road planning phase and soil protection measures must be consistently implemented in all phases of road construction projects. Soil protection measures are described in various directives and guidelines published by the European Union, several countries of Europe as well as scientific and professional associations of different industrial sectors. In this work package, we assess guidelines, soil information and best-practice examples of soil protection that relate to the planning and construction phase of a road construction project. [...]

Soil is defined as a biologically active mixture of organic matter, minerals, liquids, and gases built up from horizons consisting of different proportions of these components. It is the result of a long weathering process driven by biological, climatic, geological and topographic influences. Road construction entails soil sealing, compaction, pollution, and disposal of surplus material which compromise the soil functions with direct and indirect negative impact on people and their environment. Damage on soil must be avoided, mitigated, or compensated for. Therefore, we assessed guidelines, soil information and best-practice examples of soil protection that relate to the planning and construction phase of a road construction project in the previous work package 4 of the RoadSoil project (Deliverable 4.1, 4.2). We concluded that although a considerable number of guidelines and other information is available in the investigated countries, there are still difficulties in implementation. For this reason, we suggested to further investigate which measures are known and implemented among European experts in the field of soil protection and road construction. Further, to what extent these measures are considered effective and feasible by the experts. And finally, which problems prevent the implementation and what are potential solutions to solve them. [...]